Indiana Jones and the Great Circle revealed, and it’s coming this year

As part of the latest Xbox Developer_Direct stream, MachineGames has shared a look at Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with behind the scenes developer chat and a first gameplay reveal. It’s confirmed that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to Xbox Series X|S and PC in 2024, with a day one release straight into Xbox Game Pass.

It’s a first person action adventure set between Raiders of the Lost Arc and The Last Crusade in 1937, and includes characters from the original film returning including Doctor Marcus Brody, originally played by Denholm Elliott. Doctor Jones is working late at Marshall College but is woken up late to find a rather imposing thief stealing a sacred relic. He then heads to Vatican to figure out why that one particular relic was stolen. From there the story will take players to Sukhothai, the Pyramids, the Himalayas and beyond.

The iconic whip naturally makes an appearance and can be used for attacking enemies to stun them, pull their legs and more, as a distraction in stealth, or for swinging around the environments, and there will be plenty of puzzles for Indy to solve. While it’s mainly a first person game, it will swap to third person when certain actions are performed, such as climbing, and for cutscenes.

Indy is joined by Gina, am intrepid reporter, and they will be facing off against Emmerich Voss, the Nazi we see Indy headbutt in the first few moments of the trailer. The game will be released this year but no specific date has been given.

The Indiana Jones game was announced back in early 2021, during the grey period between Microsoft agreeing to acquire Bethesda and completing the deal in March 2021. As such there was plenty of speculation how they would handle this game in terms of exclusivity at the time. In the end, it was confirmed during the Microsoft – Activision Blizzard acquisition that Indiana Jones will be an Xbox console exclusive, as part of the FTC court case against the blockbusting buyout.

Indiana Jones is no stranger to video games, with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis one of the many point & click adventures that LucasArts released in the early 90s. There were plenty of other efforts as well, but the next games that really stood out were 1999’s Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and 2003’s Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb.

Following that, LucasArts were experimenting with new game engines in the mid-2000s for the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, using NaturalMotion’s Euphoria engine and advanced physics and ragdoll physics for a prototype of some classic brawling set in an Indiana Jones game, though after a behind closed doors demo at 2006’s E3, that project was eventually cancelled. That technology went on to provide some of the underpinnings for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, however.

Really it’s been twenty years since the last full-blooded Indiana Jones video game, and it’s high time that someone had another crack of the whip at doing the guy in video game form. Given how well known MachineGames are for making games where you get to beat/shoot/blow up Nazis, and from what we’ve seen above, I’d say they’re a pretty good fit.